This is lighter fare that my wife noticed while we were browsing through Netflix. One would have expected this to be another manga adaptation but in this instance, the reverse is true. It’s an original story written for animation and then later adapted as a manga. The core idea is cutesy yet sound enough: a teenage girl feels depressed by her familial situation and prefers to escape by turning into a cat. Unfortunately this is also inextricably tied to her infatuation for a boy in her class and this is just juvenile. This is a film that was made for the young adult market and it’s fine in that regard, but it’s not for us.
It seems that despite having only two feature films under his belt, Zach Cregger is the current hot director of horror. This one won critical claim, has an A-list cast, and most importantly made a lot of money. It admittedly gets all of the basics: good filmmaking techniques, multiple perspectives to hint at a larger mystery and shows restraint in its use of supernatural elements. Unfortunately you strip away the layers, the core is revealed to be empty and utterly uninteresting. Once you understand what is happening, none of it is remotely plausible and the whole thing falls flat for me.
It was in this film that Jacques Tati first introduced to the world the character of Monsieur Hulot, whom we’ve seen in Playtime. This is a simpler and less ambitious film, which unfortunately also means that it’s less interesting. The gags and hijinks are mildly amusing at best and not that inventive compared to what we’ve seen from the likes of Rowan Atkinson. Nonetheless there’s a certain charm in the seaside resort town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer where this was shot and this film portrays a specific style of going on holiday which now feels quaint, so it might still be worth watching for those with some affection for all things French.
We have a few good articles this month and even one that isn’t in biology.
We’ll start with that one which talks about developing aluminum tubes that are unsinkable. The tubes are treated by etching onto their interior surfaces microscopically tiny pits. These pits collectively trap a stable bubble of air in them, conferring onto the interior surface hydrophobic properties that repel water. This is the team’s latest iteration of a device they’ve demonstrated previously with improved resilience, being able to continue to float despite severe damage and even when inserted vertically into the water. The applications for this technology are obvious but of course who knows if it’s too expensive to be scaled up.
The next paper is likely to ruffle some feathers. While vegan diets for adults are generally considered to be healthy provided they are well-planned, it’s much less clear how being on such a diet would affect infants. This study shows that infants raised in meat-free families do seem to fall behind in their growth and development at the beginning. Yet by around age 2, their growth usually catches up and differences seem to even out. This seems to suggest that meat-free diets are generally safe for infants but we still have little data on long-term development.
Finally here’s an article that highlights the fact that humans are not the only species that are able to treat the injuries of our fellows. The other species in question here are ants. Depending on the species, they are able to rescue injured comrades from the battlefield and use their tongues to clean their wounds with goo that has antimicrobial properties. Others are able to perform amputations, sacrificing injured limbs to save the ant. Indeed the ants seem to be able to perform triage, periodically checking the wounded if see if their wounds have been infected and either expelling them from the nest or giving them additional care as needed.
Celine Song earned enough goodwill from her debut feature Past Lives that her second film deserves a look even if its reviews are less impressive. It assembles a strong cast to explore a bold premise about how important material wealth is to a relationship. Unfortunately it’s a bust. Song raises the question only to offer the usual, familiar answer that love conquers all. Worse, she flubs her cultural references and fails to get strong performances out of the actors, making this only a middling rom-com.
We’ve watched quite a few films by Lee Chan-dong so far but here we go all the way back to his very first one. It’s relatively simple but it may just be my favorite of his works. It’s very similar in tone to the Hong Kong gangster films of the late 1980s and early 1990s but unlike those, this has real pathos and depth. As with Pigs and Battleships, we get the life of a low-level gangster shorn of any glory or dignity and there is no happy ending to be had with the femme fatale of this story.
I’ve lusted after this game for years but this was another PlayStation exclusive. The original version was in fact never adapted for PC. We had to wait until after the Miles Morales sequel added a Remastered version of the first game before that in turn was released for PC. So it took a very long time for me to be able to play this, but at least it does have updated graphics and supposedly better performance. It was absolutely worth the wait as even after so many years, this is a top notch superhero action game.
